Don’t be nervous about your team-based interview at Wharton—our friends at mbaMission are offering important tips and hosting a team-based discussion simulation for Wharton hopefuls!

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania plans to send out Round 2 interview invitations on February 8, and once again the school is using its team-based discussion format to evaluate MBA candidates, in place of a traditional business school admissions interview. Understandably, Wharton applicants get anxious about this atypical interview, because the approach creates a very different dynamic from what one usually encounters in a one-on-one meeting—and with other applicants also in the room, one cannot help but feel less in control of the content and direction of the conversation. Yet despite the uncertainty, here are a few things that interviewees can expect: Read more

Taking the GMAT for your business school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we are featuring a series of MBA admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.

Every MBA candidate naturally wonders how to determine the best time to submit his/her business school application. Inevitably, we find that applicants typically have two main concerns: Read more

Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.

You have submitted your application. Now, it’s time to prepare for the next phase of the admissions process: the MBA interview. We thought it would be appropriate to discuss some challenging interview situations. Most business school interviews are straightforward opportunities for an interviewer to learn more about a candidate’s personal and professional backgrounds, goals, reasons for selecting a specific school, and leadership/team experiences. Yet interviews can vary dramatically from school to school, and sometimes they include a few peculiarities. So, what constitutes a “tough” interview, and how can you best navigate one? Read more

Your New Year’s resolution was to get into business school. January will be over before you know it, though. Have you assessed your MBA profile yet? Scheduled your GMAT test date? Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

You want to enroll in business school next year, but your applications and GMAT score are far from complete—maybe you haven’t even started. Round 2 MBA deadlines are fast-approaching, and now is the time to make the mad dash to meet them. If you miss Round 2, then Round 3 deadlines are still an option as well, but are they advisable?

Where do you even begin to start tackling applications and GMAT scores when you realize late in the game that next year must be your year to earn your MBA?

We’ve got some thoughts on that. Read more

Don’t have GMAT tunnel vision. Read more

How can you write essays that grab the attention of MBA admissions committees? With this thorough analysis, our friends at mbaMission help you conceptualize your essay ideas and understand how to execute, so that your experiences truly stand out. You do not need to be actively working on a $5 billion deal or have won an Olympic gold medal to go to HBS. You just need to have done the everyday things remarkably well, and you must make sure that your essays reflect your actions.

By today’s standards, the essay questions for the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania are remarkably vast. The school presents candidates with two mandatory essays and, if needed, an optional essay that applicants can use to address any extenuating circumstances. Wharton provides applicants with a fairly extensive opportunity to tell their whole story, which is quite rare these days. So take advantage of it! Brainstorm thoroughly before you start writing, and carefully consider how to optimize your best anecdotes to showcase yourself in full. Read more

How can you write essays that grab the attention of MBA admissions committees? With this thorough analysis, our friends at mbaMission help you conceptualize your essay ideas and understand how to execute, so that your experiences truly stand out. You do not need to be actively working on a $5 billion deal or have won an Olympic gold medal to go to HBS. You just need to have done the everyday things remarkably well, and you must make sure that your essays reflect your actions.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) may be known for educating great innovators—think Phil Knight and Jacqueline Novogratz, just for starters—but this year, the school’s admissions office is leaving the innovating to others and keeping its essay questions the same as last year’s. In fairness, maybe we should assume that the admissions office finished its innovation phase years ago and has iterated and tweaked its essay prompts enough to have arrived at its version of perfection. Who knows? And more importantly, does it even matter? The Stanford GSB’s task is to craft the questions, but your task is to answer them. With this essay analysis, we have done our best to help you do so successfully… Read more

We’ve invited our friends at mbaMission to share their 2016 MBA Class Profile Infographic! Check out their findings below and visit mbamission.com to sign up for a free consultation.

Choosing the right MBA program for your needs can be challenging. How do you identify the best one for your specific personal, educational, and professional goals? Read more

Our partners over at mbaMission recently wrote a post about what it takes – and doesn’t take – to get into a good business school.  Based on data released by top business schools like HBS and Stanford, many would be surprised to find that graduating from a non-Ivy school  does not decrease their chances of acceptance.  As Jeremy Shinewald puts it:

The admissions committees are more interested in your performance “ academic, professional, volunteer, personal “ than your pedigree. Further, the admissions committee is interested in diversity. We don’t feel that we are going out on a limb stating that Wharton does not want and cannot have a class of 850 UPenn undergrads, because they simply want the best potential business leaders out there and thus must jump into a much deeper pool.

You can read the full post here.